The Alchemist’s Garden, oil on linen canvas, 60″ W x 48″ H
I have now had a second home in southeast Florida for nearly 3 years. What I notice in creating my living space there is that the heavier, darker, more traditional décor feels “wrong” in Florida, for lack of a better word. It’s as if the colder, darker months of winter where we’re holed up in our igloos in the north leads us to feathering our nests with warmer, cozier, darker décor choices.
In Florida I feel, as I believe others do, that lighter, brighter, airy spaces just feel better. I feel that our surrounding environs directly influence our taste in interior décor. When it came time to create a painting for my own home, it is for this reason I chose to paint a lighter, brighter, more modern composition.
One of the things I love about living in a coastal region is the abundance of brightly colored tropical plants. It’s a place where you will see orchids cultivated to grow in the cupped “shoe” of palm tree’s bark in a front yard. My spirit lifts and soars when I see bright sunlight shining on flowers such as these. The flowers become dazzling gemstones radiating a divine beauty and they lift my spirit.
It is this emotional impact that I wanted to evoke in the viewer when I set out to create this painting.
Creating Sunshine
As you know, the sun doesn’t always shine brightly, or rather, not at the right angle, to create those bright bursts of color. When it does it’s sometimes a momentary flash, especially because of its transitory nature.
I decided to mimic this through the use of a photographic technique employing a speedlight, commonly known as a flash, to create a high-key reference photo. Flowers change too rapidly for me to paint from life.
It took a solid week, maybe two, of trial and error where I worked out the kinks in my process and waited (somewhat) patiently while my orchid, a common white phalaenopsis from the grocery store, went through several stages of growth and gave me a composition I was pleased with.
The Title
I chose the title, “The Alchemist’s Garden,” in reference to the idea of transformation of one thing into another, which the alchemist’s of old believed was possible. They believed that with the right combination of materials and process they could transform something as common as lead into something as valuable as gold.
I endeavored to perform an alchemic transformation by taking the common yet graceful elegance of a grocery store orchid and use a flash of light to transform and elevate it into something vivid and ethereal. The desired result is not the capital richness of gold, but the more valuable richness of uplifted emotion.
The Final Result
After I finished the painting I showed it to couple of friends. I love watching people’s faces and listening to what they say when they first see a painting.
I spend so many hours with my nose pressed to a canvas, focused on “getting it right,” being perhaps overly analytical, that I sometimes lose sight of the emotional impact. So, it helps me to see how other people react emotionally. When a painting is five feet wide and four feet tall like this one, it’s very likely to create some kind of emotional response if I hit the mark. It’s too big to ignore.
I have seen strong emotional responses when people see my other paintings in the past, but this one seems to hit the higher notes of emotion. My neighbor’s face and open look of wonder when she saw it told me I’d hit that elusive mark.
If I can create that deep emotional response and lift someone’s spirit with my work, I feel I have succeeded.
This, above being technically proficient, is what creating artwork is about for me now.
A Series
I have more to discover within these ideas, so I am now planning a series of Alchemist’s Garden paintings, the next of which is planned and ready to come to life on canvas.
Thank You
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Till next time, I wish all the best for you.